The Haxtun-Fleming Herald - What can we reason but from what we know? -Alexander Pope

Most Colorado taxpayers will see their property taxes increase beginning this December due to a legislative fix to a decades-long practice that incorrectly reduced local taxes for education based on what now has been determined to be a misinterpretation of the Colorado Constitution.

The change in tax collection is mandated by House Bill 21-1164, which was signed into law in June to untangle a long-held misunderstanding by the Colorado Department of Education and others in how Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights should be interpreted.

TABOR limits the amount of tax revenue the state can retain and spend. In the 1990s and 2000s, most school districts asked voters to allow them to retain and spend revenue in excess of the property tax revenue limitation imposed by TABOR — a voter decision that is also known as “de-Brucing” or “de-TABORing.”

Districts that de-TABORed had permission from voters to keep their local property tax collection mill levy at the level in place at the time of the de-TABOR vote. However, CDE and others interpreted state statute in such a way that de-TABORed districts should, instead, reduce their local property tax collections through 2007. Legal interpretation now concludes this was incorrect. Property taxes should never have been reduced.

The Legislature has required districts to determine what their correct mill levy should be, assuming that the unauthorized reductions had never taken place. Tax credits were put in place in December 2020 to backfill the difference between a district’s current mill levy and the mill levy that should have been in place because of the de-TABOR vote.

The legislation required CDE to develop a gradual correction plan for affected districts, allowing them to increase their local property tax collections by a small amount every year until the tax credits are zero. A total of 118 of the state’s 178 school districts are impacted by this taxation correction.

What does it mean for taxpayers in Haxtun School District for the 2021 tax year?

Haxtun voters passed a de-TABOR vote in 1995. Our current mill levy is 26.621. The target mill levy is 27 mills, meaning that we have in temporary tax credits. Taxpayers in our district will see a maximum one mill increase in their property tax mills for education total program yearly beginning in the 2021 tax year and occurring each year following until the tax credits are reduced to zero. A mill is a $1 tax payment for every $1,000 of taxable property value, which is set by a county assessor.